maine web development, web design, internet marketing

Facebook keeps getting bigger and if your target audience is using it, now’s a good time to get involved in the discussions about your company and industry! We’ve learned how to setup a profile, now we need something to look at – something to allure users. Let’s add some boxes to your Fan page, shall we?

Wait, what’s a box?

A box is an user developed application where you can display image galleries, twitter feeds, blog feeds, videos and many other useful marketing materials to better engage your fans or potential fans. These boxes require the use of FBML. FBML is a coding language that lets you custom build these Facebook Platform apps. An evolved version of HTML, Facebook Developers community has listed allowed FBML and HTML tags to use. So if you know HTML, FBML is not too far off.

1. Access your edit dashboard by clicking “Edit Page” below your profile photo.
2. Scroll all the way down and click on “Browse More” under “More applications”
3. This will take you to the Applications landing page, in the top left corner in the search bar type “Static FBML”
4. Click on the logo on the right and when you get to the “Static FBML” Fan page click “add to my page” below the logo
5. There will be a dialog box of all of your fan pages (maybe you have only one!) Click “Add To Page” for whatever page you would like to display

Here it is visually:

Editing your new Static FBML box

Now we actually have the “Boxes” tab added to your Fan page profile, we can see it in the tab navigation if you go back to it. Now we want to put actual content within the box! Go back to your Fan page dashboard under “Edit Page” and notice that there is a new box that says “FBML – FBML” This is your first Box.

There are 4 options for this box;

• Edit (This is where you can change the name of your box and develop inside of it using HTML and FBML)
• Application settings (You can remove the box, add a new tab to your navigation or create additional permissions to publish all of your recent activity to your wall feed)
• Link To This Tab (Clicking this will display the direct URL to your tab *Remember this for later in the blog series!*)
• Remove Application (not much to say here)

If you click the Edit link, It will take you to a page with inputs where you can implement application development. Displayed is a Box Title, the title that will be displayed on that particular box on the boxes page, as well as the input for “FBML” or the code of what will display in that particular box.

We are going to display a video within a box. Within your FBML input text box, input the following


<strong>"Fancy Title Goes Here" </strong><br><br><center><fb:swf swfbgcolor="ffffff" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:white;" imgsrc="url of your image to display" swfsrc='url of your video' width='numeric value of what your width is' height='numeric value of what your height is' /><br />click image to start video</center>

This is going to display one video of your choice…notice the similarities between FBML and HTML!

When you are finished, you can click “Save Changes” at the bottom and return back to your fan page and go to the “Boxes” tab to view your new page application.

Congratulations! This is now something you can promote on your wall or other social media outlets/blog!

Have you checked your traffic sources on your website’s analytics lately? What do you see? It’s good to see that search has a big piece of the pie, but you also want to make sure that you have a healthy balance of direct and referral site traffic as well. A couple of days ago, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, posted some advice on SEO for Startups. In the post he stressed the importance of not letting search dominate your traffic sources.

Why is web traffic diversity important?

If search engines provide an extremely high percent of traffic to your site and you are not getting traffic from other sources, it tells you that people are not finding value out of your website. A valued website will have a variety of referring site traffic from sharing links, blog posts, upcoming events, news, etc. Analytics would also show a sliver of direct traffic pie from people who have bookmarked the website or typed the URL into the address bar. Referring site and direct traffic sources show that people are connecting to a site because it offers useful content.

What can you do to diversify your web traffic?

• Provide valuable content on your website, like a blog, and keep your site up-to-date with news and events.
• Use social media like Facebook and Twitter to share links to the content on your site.
• Include links to your website on your press releases and traditional marketing pieces like direct mailers and posters.
• Use links to your web content within your email marketing newsletter that your subscribers will find useful.

Value is the key to successfully diversifying your web traffic. The content on your site needs to be of value to people or else they simply will not read it nor will they share it. Plus, search engines like to see that a site receives varied types of traffic; it lets them know that the website offers relevant content that people find useful. What does your web traffic source pie look like?

If you use a Content Management System (CMS) to control your website you are in a great position! Instead of having a basic static site you have the power over a fully dynamic system that allows you to update all your web content, which is important. If you currently have a static site the 7 perks below may have you reconsidering how you manage your web content.

1. Update and Add Content as Often as You Want
If you come out with a new product or service, you can add a new page about it on your website just by logging into your administration and creating a new article or post. With the ability to add and edit all the content on your site you are able to keep it fresh, giving visitors a reason to return. Why would visitors have a reason to come back to your site if the content never changes?

2. Instantly Update Content
It’s Saturday morning, you’re just about to go out for your morning run and you suddenly realize that you never removed the service you discontinued on Friday. Not a problem if you are near a device that is connected to the internet! A CMS is an internet application that allows you to make instant updates to your site through any computer.

3. Reduce Maintenance Costs
With the ability to update all your content through your CMS administration login there is no need to call your web maintenance provider to make costly updates. Spelling errors, address changes, and staff updates can all be done on your own through the CMS.

4. SEO is Easy to Add for Each Page
When you add a new page or make updates to an existing one it is easy to add the proper SEO elements. Most CMSs have areas to add the title, description, and keyword meta tags in addition to search engine friendly URLs and header tags. This gives you full control over how search engines find your content.

5. You Don’t Need to Know Code
The administration area of a CMS has an interface that allows you to update content through a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Edit and add content just like you would through a word processor. The system will then save the information in a database and you can publish it to your site, never having to see a bit of programming code, phew!

6. You Can Have Multiple Authors
A CMS often gives you the ability to add multiple administrator user accounts. These accounts can be assigned to have different permissions and access levels so that administrators can have different roles. Also, when someone is editing a page other users can not open it, so they can be in editing other content at the same time without worrying about overwriting each other.

7. Maintain Consistency Throughout All Channels
With a CMS you can place automatic feeds throughout your site that pull in your most recent news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. You are also able to maintain consistency from something mentioned through another channel by updating related content on your pages. For example if you mention a sale through Twitter you can link to the product page that you have edited to include the sale information. You can also link to these channels in your content giving website visitors a new perspective and branching them out.

Using a CMS to run your website allows you to keep your content fresh and consistent with your brand and all channels. This will help you maintain a professional appearance and also give visitors a reason to return to your site. Make sure that you use your CMS to its full potential by adding SEO elements and using feeds. Ensure a good balance of new content; adding too much or too many pages can overwhelm visitors and they may have a hard time finding what they are looking for. Keeping everything consistent and creating quality content is key!

We have been talking about Social Media a lot here over the last few years. We have covered tips on your strategy, tools and measuring. There is something I am not sure we have covered in depth yet… succeeding in social media and getting truck loads of business from it takes a lot of work.

Kasi and I are training for a half marathon in April, neither of us consider ourselves runners but we made it a goal to achieve during these cold winter months. We are following a formal half marathon training program. Up until now, the training has been relatively easy – running 3 days a week 3-4 miles each time. We got that down! From this week forward it starts getting really hard, more running and longer distances.

Running 3-4 miles 3-4 times a week can be done with little effect on my daily life. You can do that time on a lunch break, before work, after work, you can miss a day and make it up the next etc. If our goal was to only be people who ran 3-4 miles at a time we could rest comfortably right here without making any additional effort that would never really cause us any discomfort but, that is not what our goal was/is. Our goal is to run a whole half marathon (13.1 miles).

To complete our goal we need to really schedule our runs, keep track of time and pace, plan meals accordingly, as these runs get worse longer – we need to schedule recovery time and in some cases full half days need to be blocked off. This is going to be hard work from here on in.

Really succeeding at social media is work

Like our 3-4 mile running program, if you just want to be seen on social media and dabble you can sign up for Twitter, make a Facebook fan page, join LinkedIn, etc. If the goal for your business is to really succeed in social media (the whole 13.1 miles), you can’t just join social networks and wait for something to happen.

To really succeed at Social Media you need to:

• Set concrete goals and milestones for your social media presence (make a million dollars with social media is not a good goal to have here). You need actual tangible goals and to set a time-line for tracking your progress to these goals.
• Schedule time each day you are going to participate in this space. Social Media cheerleaders will tell you how great social media is and it is free. Signing up for most social media sites is free but it takes time to use them effectively. If you are going to be available 3 days in a row and regularly striking up conversations with your network, what happens when you take the next four days off? You need to set expectation for what people will get from a relationship with your business online and you need to stick to those or you will leave a trail of confused and possibly frustrated people online trying to keep a conversation with you going.
• Be dedicated to seeing this through and making it work. You are not going to be an overnight success. This is going to take time. You need time to build trust with your network and make useful connections online.
• You may need to reallocate resources and cut what is standing in your way. As with our running example, if I have a 12 mile run on Saturday – it is going to affect what I do on Friday. I may not be able to attend social events Friday evenings because they will conflict with the milestone I have to meet the next day. You may need to reallocate resources, personnel and more to make sure your needs are being met in this online space.
• Track what is working and what is not. Keep track of what you are doing online and see what is working and what is not. If something is not working (a specific site is showing no inbound links to your website, no one is interacting with your content et. al), then stop wasting your time in that space.

Social media is great. It is a really neat space that I am happy to be a part of. It has helped many businesses with their online marketing. Social Media has helped people find jobs, experts, answers, relationships, business partners, vendors and more. The real true people who are finding success with social media are actually working really hard. This didn’t just happen by accident. So let’s set up the Twitter account, Facebook page, LinkedIn group and blog but then let’s really get down to business…